


Ten Forward, Two Back

by orphan



Series: Ten Years [2]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Consensual Possession, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-10
Updated: 2015-09-10
Packaged: 2018-04-20 01:39:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4768757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan/pseuds/orphan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten years ago, Dipper Pines and Bill Cipher first defeated the Bulk. Twenty years ago, Dipper Pines met his future self.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ten Forward, Two Back

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so... I had a really, really crappy week starting like a day after I finished _[Ten Years, Two Weeks](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4583280/chapters/10439376)_. I needed something schmoopy, iddy, expository, bittersweet, and self-indulgent to get myself through it. This is that thing!
> 
> It's 10Y2W time-travel fic, basically because I wanted to write the following scenes: Dipper parkouring through the Mindscape; 10Y2W!Bill talking to 12-year-old!Dipper; Bill and Ford bickering like petty exes; Bipper-Dipper and Bill-Bipper; and long boring exposition about the magical "quantum" that's briefly touched on in 10Y2W. Don't say I didn't warn you, I guess. Also, this fic needs like a millionty times more Mabel in it. Sorry, Mabel. u_u
> 
> Before we start, have [Big Dipper's song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d7EbtLb8ok)...

It’s a nightmare when it starts, and doesn’t get better from there.

He’s being chased. He’s not sure by what, nor does he care. Not when he knows the Beasts’ claws are sharp and their teeth ring a ravenous maw, gleaming silver-bright against a black shadow bulk. He doesn’t know how long they’ve been chasing him, a lifetime maybe. He does know his lungs burn and his legs ache and his stomach cramps, knows that the forest is dark and treacherous, ground broken by roots that seem to rise with no other reason than to trip him.

He stumbles, he falls. He gets mouthfuls of dirt, grazes on his shins. Still he gets up, keeps running. He has to keep running, because the Beasts are still there, still always just behind him. And if he slows his pace, even for a moment, he knows—

The cliff-face comes out of nowhere. Literal nowhere, one moment the forest trail is clear, the next it’s blocked off by a wall of solid stone. He slams straight into it, the change in landscape too sudden to react to, arms out and taking most of the impact before his head can have a try. Behind him, he hears the crash of the Beasts, lunging through the forest, hears the heavy clicking thuds of their claws just behind him.

The cliff is a hundred feet of sheer stone. There’s no way he can climb it. No way on either side, either, because the landscape is changing even as he looks for an escape, curving around, boxing him in. Just the rock and the slavering, hungry Beasts.

He has a sudden, powerful longing for his sister’s grappling hook and—

“Grappling hook!”

—and it’s like a magic word. Just that one thought, and everything comes into sharp focus all around him, or as sharp and focused as the Mindscape ever is.

He’s dreaming. This is just a dream.

Dipper exhales. The Beasts are still behind him but they’re probably not real. He still knows he shouldn’t let them touch him—pain in the Mindscape still hurts, that one he does know—but they’re very likely only manifestations of his own anxieties. Awful, but nothing he hasn’t been dealing with his entire life.

He focuses on the idea of the grappling hook, willing it into existence in his hand. It’s easy to summon but harder to hold, and this place’s ontological inertia never quite works the way Dipper thinks it should. But he’s done this enough times to know the drill, and soon he can feel the heavy weight of the device. He’s pointing it upwards just as the Beasts burst from the treeline, all slavering jaws and eyes as bright and cold as distant stars.

They growl, he grins. Is thinking of something witty for his departing line, in fact, when the real nightmare kicks into play.

It comes in the form of an explosion of cold blue flame. In the form of the Beasts as they howl, devoured by the fire. In the form of an echoing laugh that goes on and on and on and on.

And then, when the flame clears and the Beasts are ash, all that’s left is an awful golden light and the mad-sharp lines of a hovering Bill Cipher, who produces a pair of sunglasses from out of nowhere, fits them over his single eye and says:

“Come with me if you want to live.”

Dipper screams, and shoots him with the grappling hook.

* * *

He can’t outrun Bill in the Mindscape. He should know this, does know this, but knowledge doesn’t mean he isn’t going to give it a good old fashioned try. 

“Wake up wake up wake up wake up!” He slaps himself on the face, pinches his skin, wriggles his fingers. Anything he can to try and give himself back the sensation of his own body. But it’s hard to focus when the ground keeps shifting underfoot, yawning chasms opening even as he jumps them. He misses one edge, falls, screams, and grabs desperately for something, anything, to hold onto. 

His fingers find something, like a tree branch or a flagpole, and his whole body jolts against his shoulder joint as his weight kicks in. Then he’s dangling, suspended over a crumbling void, the illusion of the forest falling away into the darkness. 

“You really are doing this the hard way, kid.”

Dipper slams his eyes shut. Of course the thing he grabbed onto was Bill’s arm. Of  _course_  it was. 

Dipper lets go, feels himself drop into the darkness, arms crossed and resigned to his fate. It’s like plummeting into the bottomless pit, he thinks. Twenty minutes and he’ll be out the other side.

“Don’t say I didn’t try.”

Dipper is falling but Bill is still there, because, once again, of course he is. Dipper is about to say something, make some snippy remark about Bill not having anything better to do, when everything goes red and white and Bill’s voice is shrieking:

“Over here! I found him! He’s over here!”

“Oh, come on! Seriously?”

Bill is flashing, cycling between red and yellow, using his own angles to point to Dipper like a giant, irritating arrow. Dipper doesn’t want to stick around to find out what he’s summoning. Instead, kicks out with a bare foot that hits Bill right in the bow tie, sending him backwards with an, “Oof!”

It’s a weirdly satisfying little victory, but Dipper doesn’t savor it. Instead, he’s running again, summoning ground with his mind the same way he summoned the grappling hook. It’s an oddly exhilarating experience, a pure, unbottled freedom he makes a mental note to explore another time, when Bill Cipher isn’t looming over his shoulder.

“Not bad, kid. I’m impressed.”

“Leave me alone! Get out of my head!” Dipper swings a fist, this time aiming right for Bill’s huge, smug excuse for an eye. But perspective in the Mindscape is difficult, and Bill’s size arbitrary, and Dipper ends up swinging at air.

“Careful,” Bill says. “You’ll hurt someone if you keep that up.”

Dipper just grits his teeth and keeps moving.

And then, up ahead, he sees something approaching. No, some _one_. They’re moving the same way Dipper is, leaping in long strides between chunks of temporarily solidified nothingness. Except they move like they’ve been doing it their entire life, a smooth and easy mental parkour though the Mindscape.

The figure is human, and wearing a long coat, and as he gets closer, Dipper has a sudden flash of hope that it’s Ford. That he’s noticed Bill’s presence and is coming to investigate, to save Dipper from whatever horrible thing Bill has in his little pointy vertices today.

It’s a nice hope, but the newcomer isn’t Ford. He’s too young, for starters; his hair still dark, his face older but still largely unlined. Still, he looks enough like Ford that Dipper thinks they have to be related. A lost son? A missing uncle?

Speaking of missing, the newcomer is also missing a leg. This does not, in any way, impede his movement in the Mindscape, and he runs as if there’s nothing gone. But, nonetheless, one leg ends just above the knee, jeans tied off in a knot at the bottom of the limb. He’s running straight for Dipper, and Dipper isn’t sure whether this is a blessing or a curse, particularly not when the newcomer yells:

“Bill!”

“I found him!” Bill says, even as the newcomer comes to a halt not three feet away. “But he keeps running away.”

“He’s not running now.”

This is true. Dipper isn’t sure when he stopped, but he did. They all have, and the world around them slowly bleeds back into place, the broken void replaced once more by endless forest.

The stranger looks at Dipper. He is very,  _very_  familiar, and Dipper realizes he was wrong before; the guy doesn’t look like great uncle Ford. He looks like Dipper’s  _father_. Or at least what Dad looked like in photos from about the time Dipper was born.

And then the guy raises a hand, and pushes the bangs back from his forehead. Dipper knows what he’s going to see before he sees it, and suddenly it’s like he’s falling again.

Behind him, very close, he hears Bill says, “Dun dun du-uu-uu-un!”

“Long story short,” says the newcomer, “I’m you. From the future.” He gestures at Bill. “He’s with me, also from the future—”

“That is  _not_  how it works,” Bill says.

Apparently-adult-Dipper makes the sort of expression Dipper’s seen his mother make when Dad starts arguing with her about the best way to pack the dishwasher. “It’s good enough for now,” he snaps. “The kid doesn’t need a lesson in quantum physics, he needs to stop having panic attacks every time you so much as breathe near him.”

Of all the things that’ve happened in this awful nightmare, it’s that line that hurts the most. Feels like a punch in the gut, in fact.

Bill is saying: “I don’t breathe.”

“It’s a figure of speech. You  _know_  it’s a figure of speech, stop being such a pedant.”

“I think I’d make a lovely pendant. I’ll suggest it to your sister. She can add it to her spring collection.”

Dipper’s adult self just sighs, then squats down on his haunches. Or… haunch. Whatever.

“Sorry,” he says, going for an awkward grin. “Just ignore him. As I was saying, we’re here from the future. About twenty years, in fact. I don’t want to be melodramatic and say we’ve come back to save the universe, but, well. It’s time travel. We wouldn’t be messing with it if things weren’t dire.” He tries another smile, then reaches out to ruffle Dipper’s hair. “I know you have questions, because I would. We’ll answer what we can.”

Dipper has questions. Oh boy does he ever. He has questions but he also has a churn in his gut and an ache in his heart and his mind keeps thinking  _kid_  and  _anxiety attack_  and  _good enough_ , over and over again.

He says, “’We’?” His voice is a barely-audible squeak, forced out from miles away.

Behind him, Bill says: “I live in the universe, too. Well, adjacent to it, but I still don’t want it destroyed any more than you do. I like this universe. It’s mine. When my stuff gets destroyed I get angry.” Dipper sees the flash of red, reflected in his older self’s dark eyes.

“A lot changes in two decades,” says Dipper’s adult self. “People change. Anthropomorphic floating corn chips change.”

“Hey!”

Adult Dipper smiles, standing up. “Anyway, point is, we know it’s weird, but we just need a few days. Then we’ll be gone.” Bill has moved, is now floating just over adult Dipper’s shoulder, like some sort of weird, angular parrot.

Dipper says: “What do you need from me?” He’s very proud of how steady his voice sounds.

“We need a focal point,” Dipper’s adult self says. “Back into the physical world. And, uh”—a slightly anxious glance he shares with Bill—“we need great uncle Ford not to go ballistic when he finds out.”

“Ford… wouldn’t approve?” Dipper asks. 

His adult self sighs. “I don’t know if you’ve found out yet, but he and Bill have ‘history’.” He makes air quotes, Bill scowling and folding his arms, looking away even as a series of images flickers across his surface too fast for Dipper to follow. “It’s the bad sort of family reunion. I can handle Bill—”

“I can handle myself! I said I’d be on my very best behaviour!”

“—but, uh. It would be nice to maybe have a bit of help with Ford.”

“I… guess?” says Dipper. Then: “Um. I’m sure… I mean, if you’re really here to save the universe, I’m sure he’ll be okay?”

Bill makes a noise of disgust, which Dipper feels is quite an achievement for something without a mouth. His adult self reaches a hand up, rapping gently against Bill’s… shoulder? Surface? It’s such a strangely casual touch. Dipper can’t imagine a version of himself that would casually touch Bill Cipher. He can’t imagine a version of Bill Cipher that would allow himself to be casually touched. And yet, there it is. “Be good,” adult Dipper is saying. Then, to Dipper, “It’s, uh. It’s not that part, exactly, he won’t like.” Dipper knows that expression. He’s experienced it himself a thousand times, at least nine hundred and ninety of them this summer, whenever Mabel teases him about Wendy.

“Um,” Dipper says. “Okay. So what… is it… exactly?” Even as he says it, he’s not sure he wants to know. There’s an inkling in the back of his mind that’s so… weird, so unsettling, that it just can’t be right. He has to be reading his adult self wrong, has to be jumping to conclusions. Because this is a nightmare, right? So of course it’s going to be awful, and any moment now he’s going to wake up screaming. 

His adult self runs a hand back through his hair. “Right,” he says. “Well. It’s just that, um. You see… A lot happened, and, uh. So, kinda, I didn’t… But, y’know, and—”

Bill, who has buried his eye behind his hands, says: “You’re killing me here, Pine Tree.” Then, dropping his hands, to Dipper: “He’s my boyfriend and I love him. Boom! Rip that scab right off. Ta-da! Now we all know. Wasn’t that difficult.”

Dipper, as it turns out, does not wake up screaming. Instead, what he says is:

“’Boyfriend’?”

There aren’t, he thinks, enough exclamation points or question marks in the universe to convey the emotion in that statement.

His adult self sighs, reaches up, and grabs Bill out of the air, hugging the demon to his chest like a schoolgirl with a diary. Bill… allows this. And Dipper…

Dipper bursts into laughter. Ugly, angry laughter. “Okay,” he says. “Okay, fine. I admit it, you had me. You had me there for a second. The whole me-from-the-future shtick, very good. But this? This is too much. I don’t know what you think you’re doing, Bill, but it won’t work. I want you out of my head. Now. Get out, and don’t bother me again.” He’s proud of that last part, proud of the command in his voice and the cool power stance he puts behind it, pointing finger and all. 

Bill… does not look impressed.

“I told you he’d do this,” says totally-not-really-future-Dipper. “I would’ve done this.”

“Well at least it’s not standing around here feeling awkward until the universe ends,” Bill says. He’s drumming the fingers of his right hand on not-Dipper’s arm, his weird little legs kicking down below. 

Not-Dipper sighs, crouching back down again, still holding Bill against his chest. Dipper takes a step back in response. He can’t help it. Not with Bill  _looking_  at him, all big and horrible Eye. “Look,” not-Dipper says, “I know it’s… I know it doesn’t sound like a thing that’s possible, given, uh… given the stuff that’s happened—”

“Bill stole my body and stabbed it with a fork!” Dipper feels the panic rising in his gut again, a horrible black-bile churning. 

“I did not ‘steal’ anything!” Bill snaps, which doesn’t help. “You made a deal, it’s not my fault if you—”

“Bill, seriously.” Not-Dipper shifts one arm just enough to flick Bill in the side of his… apex. Or whatever. “How ‘bout you try  _not_  being a massive asshole for like five minutes, huh?”

Bill’s eye crumples into a scowl, pupil flicking back and forth and not settling on anything in particular. “I— Look,” he says. “It’s entirely possible that was not my finest moment.”

“Yeah,” says not-Dipper. “Really? You don’t say? Outwitting a ten-year-old. You all-powerful cosmic entity you.”

“Twelve,” says Dipper, because he feels it’s important. “I’m twelve.”

“Right,” says not-Dipper, as if this interjection doesn’t register. “Anyway. The point is, I know there’s nothing I can really say to make you believe me. You’re right; this could very easily be a trick. That’s the problem with access to the Mindscape. When you’ve got the reputation as the guy who knows which buttons to press, it’s hard to convince someone that, just this one time, you aren’t. So all I can tell you is as much of the truth as I can.”

Dipper scowls, feeling suddenly very young and very small and hating that he does. He has a sudden strong wish that Mabel was here with him. She’d know what to do. Mabel always knows, at least when it comes to reading people. Or… possibly the projected illusions thereof, Dipper still isn’t sure. 

“I’m listening,” he says eventually. 

“My name is Dipper Pines,” says maybe-maybe-not-Dipper. “I’m thirty-two years old and from twenty years in your future. This”—he lifts one finger to tap against Bill, silent but watching—“is my Bill. We’ve been together for ten years and I really do love him. He also is capable of feeling bad and does feel thus about the fork thing, which I know because he’s apologised for it. Profusely. Several times.”

“C’mon, Pine Tree. Leave a guy some dignity,” Bill mutters.

“You don’t understand him yet, but you will one day,” maybe-Dipper continues. “You’ll understand a lot of things one day, and because of that you’ll realise reality and everything you know is in danger. You’ll also know it’s partly because of things you’ve done, things you didn’t understand—”

“Don’t blame the kid, he had a terrible teacher.”

“—so you’ll know you have to do something drastic to try and repair it. And to do that, you’re going to need help from both your crazy extra-dimensional triangle boyfriend and your past self. And, moreover, you know exactly how that’s going to look, and how hard a sell it’s going to be. So you’ll wish you could bring Mabel, because she was always so much better at this stuff than you were, but sadly that’s not an option. So you have to make do with what you’ve got, which isn’t much, you know, but you have to try. Because the thing you need to ask your past self to do? It’s going to be terrifying. It’s going to look like a possession, at least at first, and you know it’s not but you also know how frightened you used to be of losing yourself a second time. And you can make all the promises to your past self that it’s going to be okay, it’s not what it looks like, you really are here to help. But you’ll also know how much you struggle to believe them, especially with your crazy triangle in the mix. But you’ll still know you have to try. Because the consequences if you don’t? Yeah. You really don’t want to think too much about those.” Then he tries a smile, thin and uncertain. “So,” he says. “Past Dipper. I’ve only got one question and that is: how much do you trust yourself?”

And the thing is? The thing is, the guy in front of him looks so much like Dipper wants to look, acts so much like Dipper wants to act. He looks tough, and cool, and knows things and saves the world and if Dipper’s trying not to think too hard about the Thing With Bill in its entirety, he can still circle around the edges. Still think a future version of himself with a pet mind demon is pretty cool. Because Bill is crazy and scary and bad, or at least the version of Bill Dipper’s used to is. And that version is definitely not the version that sits docile in his older self’s arms, and if the idea that future-Dipper is  _such_  a massive awesome badass that even Bill Cipher defers to him is a just a little bit of a power trip? Then who could blame a guy for dreaming. Dreaming in the Mindscape, even. 

There’s another part of Dipper, buried somewhere deep under the queasy fear and giddy elation that says,  _that’s what he’d want you to think_ , and doesn’t know who the “he” in that sentence is referring to.

In the moment, however, that voice is very quiet. Mostly, what Dipper sees is an opportunity to prove himself, to do something, to save the universe. And so he says:

“Um. What would I have to do?”

Dipper’s adult self smiles, exhaling in relief, a strange relic of a gesture in this place without breath. 

Dipper’s adult self does that, but it’s Bill who says: “Put ‘er there, kid.” And he extends his hand, cold blue flame exploding along the black. 

Dipper closes his eyes, swallows, and shakes.

* * *

The next bit, he hears about from Mabel after it happens. About how she’s lying in bed, asleep, when he screams. Screams and gasps, back rising from the mattress, wreathed in glowing blue.

The Stans are upstairs in an instant, Stan first, Ford following. Stan lunges to grab Dipper’s floating, rigid body, but it thrown back against the wall by an explosion of fiery blue. It’s Ford who knows—or thinks he knows—what he’s seeing, growling, “Bill Cipher!” before running back downstairs. By the time he reappears, carrying a book and a strange device Mabel has no explanation for, Dipper’s already started to… split.

This is the part, she shamefully admits later, where Mabel closes her eyes. So she hears screaming and yelling and Dipper making a horrible choking noise. The crackle of magic and the beep of strange machines. And then she hears silence, and then two heavy thuds, as if two bodies are hitting the floor. Or, rather, one thud as if a body hits the floor, another as if it hits the bed.

And then:

“Holy fucking shit what a ride.”

This is the part where Dipper opens his eyes. He sees Mabel, curled up in terror against the wall, peeking at him through her fingers. He sees Grunkle Stan, peeling himself off another wall. He sees Ford, brandishing magic and devices.

And he sees himself, his adult self, slowly standing up.

The voice, he knows, is Bill’s. Or, rather, it’s his own voice—his adult voice—but the intonation, the tone, the nasal whine, is Bill’s. It’s Bill speaking through his body, and Dipper remembers this, remembers the sound of that awful, terrible voice. He sits up, scoots as far back as he can against the bed-head, eyes wide in terror even as he knows—deep in his gut, he  _knows_ —he’s made the worst mistake of all.

Ford says: “Get  _out_ , demon! You have no domin—”

Dipper’s adult self—adult Bipper, whatever it is—spins at the sound of Ford’s voice. Then it brings up a hand, burning in blue flame, and with a gesture sends Ford slamming back against the wall. “Not  _now_ , old man!” it snarls.

And then it turns to Dipper. Turns to him, and is lunging towards him. Then its hands are around his biceps and its face is right up against his, eyes wide and manic.

Dipper tries to shriek, finds he can’t, and then the thing says:

“Kid. Are you okay? Are you hurt? It shouldn’t hurt. Nowhere at all. You should be perfectly, absolutely, a-okay 100% A++ unhurt. If not, if your scalp so much as itches, if your eye twitches, if your head aches, you gotta tell us, okay? ‘Cause it means we messed up. You were just a conduit. It’s weird, I know. But it shouldn’t hurt. If it does, tell us. Tell us now. We can fix it, but you gotta tell let us know.”

It’s the eyes, Dipper thinks. They aren’t quite focused on him in sync. And one is… one is  _wrong_ , in some way he can’t quite explain. But both are very wide and very earnest, and when the thing, the Bipper, talks, its voice oscillates between Bill’s nasal whine and the voice Dipper recognizes from his own adult self. Like they’re both yelling at him in tandem, but using only one voice to do it.

Dimly, he registers they’re asking him a question.

“I…” he starts.

“Take your time.” That’s definitely Dipper’s own voice. “Get it right.” That one’s Bill’s. “We haven’t done this before either.” And that sounds like both of them, cracked and wavering.

Thirty years old, a part of Dipper thinks, and he still can’t get away with not having an awful, broken voice.

Another part, the part that’s not laughing hysterically, closes his eyes, and considers the question.

“I… I’m fine,” he says. “I don’t… This is weird,” he admits. “But I’m fine.”

The Bipper looks at him for a moment longer, both eyes searching him for… he’s not sure what. Any trace of deception, perhaps. It only lasts a moment, and then the Bipper’s shoulders sag in relief, its fingers uncurling from Dipper’s forearms. It mutters something under its breath, some thankful sub-aural prayer, and then, quite abruptly, is rearing back with a, “It worked! It worked!” that degenerates into mad, cackling laughter.

That one, Dipper thinks, is definitely Bill.

Ford must come to the same conclusion, because the sound spurs him back into action, lunging forward, instruments raised. The Bipper notices, swinging around, flames wreathing its raised hand. “Just  _try_  it, Fingers.”

“Bill Cipher,” Ford growls. He looks… he looks  _dangerous_. Dangerous in a way Dipper’s never really seen before. Dangerous in the way that foretells murder.

“Stanford Pines.” Bill mimics Ford’s intonation, but the voice is mocking and ironic. “I’ve been waiting a lo—”

“Hey!”

It’s weird, Dipper thinks, to see himself interrupt himself while talking. Weird enough to send hysterical giggles bubbling up his throat.

“Hey,” adult Dipper is saying. “Put it away, Bill. Right now! We talked about this. You wanna play you and him fight with great uncle Ford? Find some other fucking body to do it in.”

Dipper isn’t sure what’s more startling; hearing swears in his own voice, or seeing the flames on the Bipper’s arm flicker and die out. Admittedly, it does take Bill a moment, and judging from the expression on his eye—the one eye he seems to control independently of Dipper’s adult self—he isn’t happy about it. But he does it, then lowers his hand.

Even as he does, the Bipper’s other hand is coming up in a gesture of placation. “Grunkle Stan,” adult Dipper says. “Great uncle Ford. The short answer is, yes, I’m Dipper Pines”—he does the bangs-lifting thing again—“yes, Bill is with me, yes, we’ve travelled back here from about twenty years into the future and, yes, it’s fate-of-the-universe sort of stuff. We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t, believe me.”

“What have you done to the boy?” Ford still sounds like he's seeing one head-spin away from trying an exorcism.

“Nothing.” That one’s definitely Bill. Then, in Dipper’s voice: “We both needed conduits to get back here. Bill can already move in eleven dimensions. Folding back on my own timeline was harder, but we did it, and the kid should be fine.”

 _The kid_  again. Dipper tries not to feel his heart break a little every time he hears it.

Ford isn’t convinced. He keeps up a barrage of questions—why here, why now, why Dipper—until adult Dipper raises both hands. “Okay,” he says. “Okay. I’ll tell you what I can. Just…” A quick look towards Dipper, and then one to Mabel. “Just not in front of the kids, okay?”

There’s a moment, a long, tense, awful moment. And then Ford nods.

“Fine.”

* * *

“Left eye, Bill. Right eye, Dipper. This is really, really creepy.”

Later. They’re sitting on the couch in the den, Mabel peering over the edge of it, holding up one hand in front of her face, then the other. Dipper is sitting on the far side, wrapped in a blanket, not daring to look into the kitchen.

Stan and Ford and the Bipper are there, encased in some kind of soundproof forcefield thingie Ford dragged up from the basement. Dipper can see what’s going on inside, but not hear whatever’s being spoken about. Not that he wants to see. Because Mabel’s right; the Bipper is  _creepy_.

“Do you think he’s really future-you?”

“I don’t… I don’t know.”

The Bipper has two legs, that Dipper did notice. Two legs, but he walks with a limp, and there’s something… thin about the shape beneath the fabric of his jeans. A prosthetic, Dipper thinks. Something not needed in the Mindscape, but definitely required here.

Mabel is saying: “And  _Bill_? Like, seriously? He’s possessing you but— whoa! Great uncle Ford just totally flipped out.”

Dipper buries his head in his hands, groaning. He has a pretty good idea what Ford is panicking about. The words “boy” and “friend” may be heavily involved.

“Aw, man. I think they’re gonna fight again? Except you’re kinda… holding yourself back? Wow. Maybe… Can you read lips? I think they’re saying something really interesting. I think it’s  _Bill_  saying something. He really, really seems not to like great uncle Ford. What’s up with that?”

Dipper just groans, pulling the blanket up over his head. “Mabel,” he says. “I think… I think I did a really awful thing.”

And then Mabel is there, pressing on the outside of the blanket, peeling it back to peer inside. “Bro-bro?”

Dipper looks at her, all shiny braces and their dad’s old t-shirt, and he sighs. Then he tells her everything. Or everything he knows, at least. Which isn’t very much.

When he gets to The Part About Bill, Mabel’s reaction is exactly as Dipper expected.

“‘Boyfriend’?” she shrieks. “Wha-aa-aa-aa’?”

Dipper just buries himself back under the blankets. “I don’t know,” he says, miserable and unsure. “That’s just what they told me.”

Mabel makes a face, somewhere between confused and curious. “How does that even work? He’s a  _triangle_! I know you love math but this is taking things too far.”

“Mabel…”

“I mean, he doesn’t even have a mouth?”

“Mabel…”

“Or the ability to manifest in the real world? Like, does he just possess you and you go on dates alone and laugh at your own jokes?”

“Mabel…”

“Or is he like Candy’s Astral Boyfriend and you only hang out in your dreams? Except, kinda more literally I guess? Since Bill is actually sorta real, as opposed to—”

“Mabel!”

“What?”

“Can you… can you just not?” He pulls himself back down into the warm, dark cocoon of the blanket. No light, no air, no future Dipper, no boyfriend Bill.

“Dipper…”

He feels arms curl around him, returns the hug without leaving the safety of the blanket.

After a while, he says: “This is so messed up.”

“Yeah,” says Mabel. “Well, welcome to Gravity Falls.”

* * *

They don’t sleep for the rest of the night. At least, not back up in their beds. Dipper dozes on the couch, Mabel’s head heavy against his shoulder. He’s too anxious to sleep properly, especially after…

After.

So he sits, and watches the moon slowly set and the sun slowly rise, and all the the while Ford and Stand and his (possible) future self shout at each other silently in the kitchen.

At least, his future self and Ford do the shouting. Stan mostly just sits in a chair, arms crossed and expression grim. Every now and again, his eyes meet Dipper’s across the rooms. Dipper always looks away before he can work out the expression behind the look.

They’re still arguing, in fact, when the first tour bus rolls up.

It’s Mabel who breaks the cone of silence, rushing inside to warn everyone. Stan says something, or starts to, but the Bipper stands, walking out of the silence with long strides saying: “—be ridiculous. Get dressed, we’ll handle this.”

“Hey. Kid, wait!” Grunkle Stan, following the Bipper out, thick brow drawn down in consternation.

But the Bipper just throws up a hand, waving Stan’s concerns away. “Don’t worry,” says Bill, definitely Bill. “We’ve done this a thousand times.”

Ten minutes later, it’s pretty evident he’s not lying. Not about that, anyway. Bill—and it is Bill, from the voice and the extravagance—leads tours of the Mystery Shack to rival those of Grunkle Stan. Even the man himself has to admit a kind of grudging respect for Bill’s devotion to his art.

From there, the presence of tourists means the day rolls on as something alarmingly normal. Even if the Bipper has conjured some ridiculous outfit for himself in yellow and black. The fact he can apparently do Mindscape-level magic here, in the real world, bothers Dipper and, he knows, would bother great uncle Ford, too, were the latter not safely hidden away in his lab and thus not able to witness it occurring. Dipper considers going down to tell him, but somehow there’s always some other distraction—some tourist to fleece, some item to shelve—and he never quite gets around to it.

And then, of course, there’s the worst part of all:

“Oh. My. God. You have to put in a good word for me with Tyrone.”

Dipper blinks. It’s hard to think, because it’s always hard to think when Wendy’s face is an inch from his own. Particularly when her cheeks are flushed and lips are parted, her fists balled in his jacket. She’s so close, Dipper thinks, and if she’d just lean forward, just a little, then—

Then her words suddenly register.

“’T-tyrone’?”

“Yeah,” Wendy says. “Your cousin. Tyrone. You didn’t tell me you had a cousin  _that hot_. And the leg thing? Totally works. So seriously. Do me a solid, okay? Tell him how great I am at, uh. I dunno. Make something up. But make it cool.”

Dipper opens his mouth, is just about to squeak some kind of protest when he hears: “Hey, Wendy? Can you help me with this for a second?”

Then Wendy is rearing back, huge grin splitting her smooth, soft skin. “Eee!” she squeals. “That’s him! Oh, man. Do I look okay? How’s my hair? Is my— no. No, okay. Okay, Wendy. You can do this. Be cool.”

“… Wendy?”

“Eee! Co-oo-oo-oming!”

Then she’s gone, chasing after the nasal buzz of Bill’s voice, and Dipper thinks he’s going to be sick.

“Looks like you lucked out on this one, heh.” Then Soos is there, dusting off his hands and smirking a knowing smirk.

“He—” Dipper starts. “I—  _Tyrone_?”

“I asked him that, too.” Soos nods sagely. “He says if he lets Wendy get a crush on future-you, Mr. Cipher’s gonna make him sleep on the couch forever.”

“Wait.  _What_?” Dipper looks up at Soos, aghast.

“I know, right?” Soos says. “I told him, I’m like, ‘Dude, she’s like fifteen.’ And he’s like, ‘I know, it’s not about me, it’s about little Dipper.’ And he gives me this look, like”—Soos gives an impression of This Look—“And I’m like, ‘Oo-oo-ooh’”—a tap of one finger against the side of his nose—“‘Don’t worry, Misters Cipher-Pines. Your secret is safe with Soos.’”

“Wait. You… you know about Bill? And— and—”

“And future-you? Oh yeah. I worked that out hours ago.”

“How?”

Soos frowns at him as if the question makes no sense. “Uh, dude. One of them talks like you, one of them talks like that triangle thing we fought that one time. But I figured he must be good now or something because he’s running tours? And is also dating future-you?”

Dipper screams. Just a little. He can’t help it. “He’s not my boyfriend!”

“Well, no,” Soos says. “I mean, not yet, obviously.”

This time, Dipper screams for real.

* * *

Bill vanishes in the early afternoon, just after they wave off the last set of tourists. 

“Work done. Homework time. Bye bye for now!” he announces. Then adult Dipper’s body does a sort of jerk, as if it’s just been almost knocked over by a gust of wind only it can feel. And adult Dipper says, “Agh! Bill, seriously…” to no one in particular, bringing up a hand to rub at his brow. 

“Kid?” asks Stan. 

“I’m fine,” Dipper’s adult self says. “He’s just been manic all morning. It’s like spending a six hour bus trip sitting next to someone who yells non-stop about everything they can see out the window.” A pause, then: “What I am, though, is starving. How ‘bout some lunch?”

They get halfway inside the Shack when Ford reappears from the basement, carrying a beeping device and a grim expression. 

“It’s gone?” he says, waving the device at Dipper’s adult self. “Is it gone?”

“If you mean Bill,” says adult Dipper, “then yes, he’s out.”

Ford grabs adult Dipper’s jaw, turning his head around and staring into his eyes. Whatever he sees there must satisfy him, because he relaxes his grip and says, “Quickly, boy. Come with me. We don’t have much time.”

Dipper’s adult self just sighs, eyes flicking to Dipper, just briefly, before he says, “Don’t. I know what you’re doing, and just… don’t.”

Ford is not deterred. “Listen,” he says, “I know you think you’re in control, but you aren’t. Bill Cipher is dangerous. Whatever kind of deal you’ve done with him, whatever he’s promised you—”

“We haven’t done a deal,” adult Dipper says. “And he hasn’t promised anything.”

Ford’s scowl has his mouth forming such a deep inverted U that Dipper wonders if his jaw is in danger of falling off. “Don’t lie to me, boy. Cipher cannot possess an unwilling victim. At least not initially.”

Dipper has a sudden memory of a flame-wreathed hand, of the itch of healing scratches. “Uh…” he says.

But his adult self’s eyes flick to him, and before he can speak his adult self is saying: “I’m not unwilling, it’s just not what you think. I know you’ve had your problems with Bill in the past, but I’d appreciate it if we could can it with the projection bit.”

“What do you know about my ‘problems’ with Bill Cipher? What lies has that monster told you?”

“When he’s in my head,” Dipper’s adult self says, “or when I’m in  _his_  head, I have access to his memories. Including his memories of you. I know exactly what your history is, from your side and from his. I’m sorry about what happened but there’s nothing I can do to fix it now.”

“I only want to—” Ford starts, then stops, blinks, and says: “Wait. You’ve been in Cipher’s Mindscape?”

“Yes,” Dipper says, “I have. And I’ve been to the other side of it, into Bill’s ‘body’, for want of a better word. And no, I’m not going to tell you when or why or how or what either is like. That’s between him and me.”

“What do you mean, Bill’s ‘body’?”

Dipper’s adult self sighs, shouldering past Ford and into the kitchen. “Ford,” he says as he goes, “if you don’t know by now what Bill is, then it’s because he doesn’t want you to. I’m not going to betray his trust.”

“That thing isn’t worth your trust!”

“That’s your opinion,” Dipper’s adult self says. “But, word of advice? If you find it difficult to trust anyone, maybe the problem in your relationships isn’t other people, yeah?”

Ford just scowls at adult Dipper’s retreating back, then heads back into the basement.

* * *

Bill reappears about an hour later, as sudden as he left. Dipper’s adult self does the stagger thing, and when he next looks up his Bill-eye is back, manic and strange, and he’s pointing at Dipper and announcing, “Your sister! Where is she?”

“Uh…” says Dipper, not convinced he should answer.

But Bill solves his dilemma for him, rushing off at a scrambling limp, calling Mabel’s name.

Dipper runs after him, because it feels like he should, Stan following close behind. They’re halfway up the stairs when they hear Mabel’s surprised shriek, and by the time they reach the attic, they see Bill holding her off the ground, hands wrapped around her chest beneath her armpits. She looks afraid for exactly as long as it takes Bill to say:

“Art supplies. I need art supplies. Right now. It’s an emergency!”

Then her mouth splits in a huge, metallic grin as she says, “Mister, have you come to the right Pines! Emergency art supplies, coming right up!” She salutes, still dangling in mid air, and Bill laughs his awful laugh as he puts her back down on the floorboards.

“You are never a disappointment, Shooting Star.”

Mabel scurries off to fetch what Bill wants, even as Dipper and Stan make their way into the attic. “Art supplies?” Stan asks.

“Yes!” Bill says. He’s standing so that his Dipper-half is turned towards the wall, so his expression appears as pure, unadulterated Bill. Dipper finds he can’t look at it, not on the face so eerily similar to his own. 

“What do you need—?” is as far as Stan gets before Ford lurches up the stairs with a, “What is going on here? Cipher? What are you up to?”

Bill just rolls his eye and ignores Ford’s interjection, instead striding forward when Mabel emerges from her room laden with paper and cardboard and pencil cases. “Art supplies!” she announces. 

Bill joins her on the floor in the attic, unrolling a large sheet of paper, picking and choosing pens and pencils. He wields one in each hand, getting to work on sketching symbols and lines and Dipper recognises the style, because it’s the same one Ford uses in the Journals. Bill writes and sketches so quickly, so assuredly, that it’s mesmerising to see. Mabel is certainly rapt, lying on her stomach with her chin in her hands, legs kicking in the air. 

Dipper gets closer. “What are you doing?” he asks.

“Got Summoned,” Bill says, without looking up. “Couldn’t resist. Not literally. Figuratively.”

“’Summoned’?” Ford sounds alarmed at the word. “By whom? Who not in this room is capable of such a thing?”

Bill has apparently decided to deal with Ford by pretending the man doesn’t exist, so doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to, not when Mabel’s eyes meet Dipper’s with alarm, and they both exclaim, “Gideon!” at the same time.

“Bingo,” says Bill.

“What does he want?” Dipper feels the cramping nausea rising in his gut again. “What did you promise him?”

But even as Dipper’s saying this, Bill is rearing back, sitting upright, hands raised. And when he next speaks, it’s with Dipper’s adult voice. 

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” adult Dipper says. “Bill, hold up. Remember when you are. Mess with Gideon if you have to, but the kid’s ten, man. Ten. Can we maybe dial down the stakes a little?”

Bill, Dipper thinks, must still be controlling the Bipper’s fingers, because the pens twirl backwards and forwards across the knuckles. “Sure,” Bill says. “Sure, we can do that. How far do you want them dialled down? Giant killer robot level? Mind control level? Give me a baseline here, Pine Tree.”

Watching the Bipper argue with himself is… interesting. Dipper find himself looking closely, trying to tell which consciousness is controlling which part at any one time. The face seems mostly fixed down two halves, but he’s pretty sure the rest fluctuates. 

Adult Dipper says: “He’s ten, Bill. Ten.”

“You do remember,” Bill says, “that the other day he tied you and your sister to a chair in a cave full of explosives.”

“Er…” says Dipper’s adult self. “That was a long time ago, man.”

“No,” Dipper hears himself say. “No, it was… it was literally the other day. We nearly died.” He tries not to think about it too much, hanging from a fraying rope from a giant stone nose. There are a lot of experiences he tries not to think about. That’s one of them. 

“See?” says Bill. “There was also the time he had McGucket build the giant robot.”

“That was like last month,” Mabel adds, helpfully. “We nearly died then, too.”

“And now,” Bill continues, “he’s summoning demons, a.k.a. yours truly, to—” He cuts himself off, glances around the room. Then makes an odd expression, or rather cycles through a series of odd expressions, as if he and Dipper’s adult self are having some internal conversation. One that’s eliciting strong responses from the both of them. “So if you’re cool with that,” Bill concludes after a moment, “then fine, we can play it straight and don’t say I didn’t try. But maybe we should take a poll around the room of people who think Wil’ Gwiddy deserves everything that he can get.” His tone, Dipper notes, indicates he does not mean that in the sunshine and kittens sort of way. 

“Are we voting revenge?” Mabel asks, hand shooting up into the air. “Because I vote revenge. Gideon is just the  _worst_. Urgh.”

“He has tried to murder my family more than once,” Stan says, hand going up. “Kinda got a problem with that no matter the kid’s age.”

“Um,” says Dipper. “This is a really bad idea.” But he also raises his hand. He tries not to look at Ford when he does so. 

Dipper’s adult self looks at them all, then sighs. “Fine,” he says. “Just… be careful.”

“Pine Tree, please. I’m a professional. Messing with morons who try to do deals with demons is what I  _do_.”

“Yeah, and it doesn’t always work out great for you, does it?” says Dipper’s adult self. But he lets go of their body, Bill shaking out their arms and spinning his pens before returning to his work. “Also,” adult Dipper adds, “you do realise ‘morons who deal with demons’ covers me, too.”

“Yeah, well,” says Bill. “What can I say? You had a terrible teacher.”

Ford just makes a disgusted noise, and stomps the whole way down the stairs.

* * *

Bill ropes Mabel into his project, as well as Grunkle Stan and his forgery skills.

“Gotta make this look old,” he says, gesturing to his slowly emerging… whatever it is. 

“One steaming hot pot of dirt and coffee, coming right up,” says Stan, vanishing into the kitchen. 

Dipper, whose talents lie outside both the fields of art and larceny, watches for a while, before wandering off to look for Ford. 

Ford, unsurprisingly, is in the basement, pouring over books and papers and files. “I want that demon out of my house,” he snaps, when Dipper walks in. “I should have done this years ago.”

“Um. Can I help?” Dipper, who in more ways than one feels like this is his fault, even if he’s not entirely sure what “this” is. And while he might be okay with sending Bill after Gideon, he’s not convinced he wants to spend the night sleeping under the same triangular roof.

Ford hands him a stack of books and notes and files, along with a vague instruction that, “I know it’s here somewhere…”

“What is?” Dipper cracks open a book and ends up with a face full of dust and pages and pages of Ford’s scrawled writing.

“Protection against Bill Cipher,” Ford says, retrieving his own stack of study material. “Something to get him out and keep him out. For good.”

A lot of the book Dipper has is in code. Some of it he’s familiar with, some of it he isn’t. After a moment’s hesitation he says, “Um. Great uncle Ford?”

“Mm?” comes the distracted reply.

“What… um. How do you know Bill?”

Ford stops, looks up, scowls, and says, “That’s a long story for another time. But the short of it… He’s someone I once considered a friend. A partner in my work. By the time I realised he was nothing of the sort, it was almost too late. I won’t have another member of this family making the same mistake.”

“Do you really think the other Dipper really is a future version of me?”

“Yes,” says Ford. He doesn’t elaborate as to why, but the certainty in his voice is not an invitation to further questioning. Dipper thinks of how long they spent last night—earlier this morning—sitting behind the cone of silence. 

Dipper thinks of that and he thinks of the mad gleam in his future self’s Bill-eye. He thinks of a dozen triangular windows and of an arm covered in scratches from the tines of a fork. He thinks of his future self, who’s tall and calm and awesome. Who saves the world. Who Wendy likes, and likes in That Way. Dipper thinks of that guy, and he thinks of Bill Cipher, and he thinks that, maybe, twenty years from now, Dipper Pines is going to be in a lot of trouble. 

Mostly, he thinks Dipper Pines, age twelve, is going to be the one to help.

He keeps reading.

* * *

The Bipper returns just after dinner, tossing Grunkle Stan back his car keys as he enters the den. 

“Done and done,” he says, although Dipper isn’t sure if it’s Bill speaking or if it’s his adult self. “Consider ironic revenge justly served. Also, I bring souvenirs!” And then he produces something big and silver from behind his back, dropping it daintily onto the top of Waddles’ head. 

The pig just oinks, blinking in docile acceptance from underneath Gideon Gleeful’s pompadour.

Dipper excuses himself, and goes to find Ford.

* * *

When the floorboards creak, his heart skips. He stops each time, barely daring to breathe, ears straining, but each time the Shack is silent, just the faint buzz of crickets and hoot of distant owls, coming in from outside. No one is awake, just him, the weight of the Journal heavy in his hands, pages and cover curling from the sweat. He’s afraid, he’s so afraid, but he has to do this, has to try. How can he look himself in the eyes—in the eye—tomorrow if he doesn’t?

It takes too long to get to the spare room. Far too long, but then he’s there, feeling tiny and frightened and impossibly young in the shadow of his own future.

His older self has stubble. Stubble and a rough coating of hair along his leanly muscled chest and arms. He’s lying on his back, snoring in the silver moonlight, sprawled out with most of the blankets heaped on the floor. Dipper is standing on the side with his older self’s missing leg, and he stares at the scars for a long time, the ragged stump, the strange curling fractals, shiny flesh all but glimmering in the moonlight.

He is really, really cool. That’s the main reason Dipper is here. In twenty years’ time he’s going to turn into a badass of the sort to rival—to exceed—his great uncles, and Dipper’s heart aches to think about it. He wants this man’s approval, wants older-Dipper to look at him and not be ashamed of the stupid kid he used to be. He knows he can prove himself. He just needs this one thing, this one opportunity. One thing he can help with, one problem he can solve.

Very gently, he puts the Journal down on the floor, the spine making a soft  _pfapt_  that freezes Dipper in place. His older self doesn’t even react, the sound lost beneath exhaustion and snoring.

When Dipper’s fingers turn the Journal’s pages, they leave damp little wrinkles in the paper. He finds what he’s looking for, the ritual he bookmarked earlier. Then he takes a stick of chalk out of his pyjama pocket, and starts drawing. 

The diagram is complex, much more so than it’d looked, sitting on the page. It’s also a circle, or is supposed to be, and the bed is pushed up against the wall. Meaning Dipper has to keep crawling under it, drawing a little, then wriggling back out again to re-check the diagram and fix the bits he missed. The room is dark, lit only by the silvery moonlight, filtering in through a too-small window, and the darkness makes some of the details in the sigils difficult to see. The result is that the work is painstaking, Dipper’s lines shaky and unsure, wobbling in time to his ragged breath and pounding heart.

He’s almost done, just checking over the last details, when he goes back to the journal only to find it gone. 

“Pretty good effort, kid, but you’re missing a chunk on the far side.”

Dipper’s heart stops. He doesn’t scream, and is quietly proud of that. He wonders when it happened. Wonders when the silver moonlight slipped into the dull grayscale of the Mindscape. 

Dull except for the sickly golden glow.

Very slowly, Dipper turns.

Bill Cipher is floating above the motionless body of Dipper’s older self. Motionless and silent, and Dipper thinks that should’ve been the giveaway. Even if the light didn’t clue him in, the silence should’ve.

“See,” Bill says, “this is the problem when you copy things you don’t understand. Anyone can write out an equation, but if you don’t know what the symbols mean, how can you know your result is going to make sense?” His voice is so conversational, almost subdued. He’s not looking at Dipper, his big eye moving back and forth as he flicks through the pages of the Journal in his hands.

“You— you give that back!” Dipper’s voice only breaks a little as he says it. He tires to be proud of the small victory.

Bill looks up, then shrugs, the motion odd in something without shoulders. Then he uncrosses his weird little legs and begins to float closer. Dipper staggers backwards just as fast. “Stay away from me!” He has a flash of panic, a vision of himself in black, the sight of scratch-marks on his skin, four angry little red grooves gouged over and over. His breath is coming very fast, his gut burns so much he’s worried he might throw up. Throw up or pass out, and he’s not sure if he can do either in the Mindscape and he doesn’t want to find out, doesn’t want to know what Bill will do to him if—

“Breathe, kid. You’re gonna pop something.”

A cold blue glow appears at the edge of his vision, and when Dipper looks up, the journal is floating there, pulsing slowly. Bill, meanwhile, is hovering above the floor, but hasn’t moved far past the bed.

Dipper looks at Bill and he looks at the Journal. He tries channelling great uncle Ford: “No tricks, Cipher! I mean it!” That wasn’t too bad, he doesn’t think. 

“I don’t necessarily want to disabuse you of that life-saving lack of trust for yours truly,” Bill says. “But you might wanna keep it on hold ’til the timeline sorts out. Otherwise this is gonna get real awkward for all of us. The book’s yours, incidentally. Just take it.”

“Why—?”

“Because you asked for it. And as nostalgic as it is to laugh at Ford’s incompetence, there’s nothing in there I don’t already know.”

Dipper knows he shouldn’t, he really does, but he just can’t help but ask: “’Incompetence’?”

Bill just rolls his eye. “Do you even know what you’re trying to do here, Pine Cone?”

“I—” Dipper swallows, then bristles. “’Pine  _Cone_ ’? What happened to tree?”

“It’s either that or ‘Lil’ Dipper’, so take your pick.”

“I— No, absolutely not! And… and this isn’t the point!” Dipper draws himself up as tall as he can, which isn’t, very. But it’s not like Bill is huge right now, either, so: “I won’t let you get away with this, Bill Cipher!”

“Get away with what?”

“With… with whatever you’re doing to him!” Dipper points to the still body of his older self.

Bill looks backward, an oddly flat twisting, then forward again to regard Dipper. “Letting him sleep?” he says. “Which he doesn’t do enough and neither do you, given it’s”—a glance at his wrist as if he’s wearing a watch, which he isn’t—“3:18am. Getting some shut-eye at 3am is hardly nefarious.”

Bill is being so calm and reasonable, and if Dipper’s honest he’s finding it more frightening than if he were dealing with manic and malevolent. “If… if that’s true, then why are you out?”

“Gotta make up your mind, Pine Cone,” Bill says. “You want me in or out?” He gestures to the chalk on the floor, and Dipper feels the heat rise to his cheeks. 

“I—”

“I’m out,” Bill says, “because I don’t sleep, and it gets boring being in a body that does. And also because of you.”

“I knew it! I knew you were plotting—”

“We had a bet,” Bill continues, as if Dipper isn’t talking. “That you’d do something like this. The bet was  _what_  you’d do. Turns out, you do know you better than I know you, and now I owe you— uh, never mind what I owe you, you’ll find out when you’re older. But point is, an _exorcism_ , Pine Cone? Really? I told you you wouldn’t be stupid enough to do that, but apparently not.”

Dipper looks away, suddenly feeling very small and angry and ashamed. His older self… His older self made a bet with Bill, and Bill had been the one to overestimate him? Dipper doesn’t know what to do with that information.

“What did you think would happen, exactly?” Bill asks. His voice… isn’t unkind, as far as Bill’s voice is able to convey any emotion other than arrogant condescension, and that makes Dipper even angrier.

“Shut up,” he says. “Whatever you’re doing, it won’t work.” Easier to think Bill is playing games. Dipper would much rather that than consider he might be being pitied by a demon.

“Even if you threw me out, Big Dipper’s just gonna realise when he wakes up. Then he’ll invite me back again. You know he’s not stuck with me, it’s just the easiest way to get a body, given we had to leave mine at home.”

“Your… body?”

An image flashes up inside Bill’s outline. A selfie, of two men holding onto to one another, grinning at the camera. Dipper recognises himself—his older self—as the man on the right. Then man on the left is… strange. He has an eyepatch and shark-sharp teeth, and a fondness for black and yellow.

“It’s a clone,” Bill says. “Because I know you’re wondering. But it was grown just for me. Well, just for me and— actually, never mind.” The image flickers out, Bill returning to his regular colour. “Clone. Mine.”

“Why did you leave it behind?” Dipper tries not to think about how happy he looked in the image. 

“Logistics,” says Bill. “To get big you back here I had to fold over on my own timeline. I can do that, but only from the far side of the Mindscape. The magic was in bringing Pine Tree along for the ride. His mind? Easy, but then we’d have nowhere to put it when we got here. We considered using you or Ford but Pine Tree thought it’d waste too much time with everyone freaking out. So we did this, instead. Burnt through a bunch of power but we got there. Bringing my unconscious meatsuit along would’ve been too much on top of what we already had to do, particularly when I could just ride shotgun. Tl;dr, I can do ten dimensions in my sleep, it’s the eleventh that blunts my angles.”

Dipper says, “You… you can travel through time?” He dimly recalls his older self saying something similar, but Dipper hadn’t thought to question it at the time.

“I can travel through every dimension,” Bill says. “Mostly it’s not worth the effort.”

Dipper looks at the Journal, still floating within reach. He feels… strange. His stomach queasy, his palms sweaty. “Why… why are you telling me this?” he asks.

“You asked.” Bill says it as if it’s the most obvious, self-evident thing in the world. As if the strange outcome would be if he weren’t obliging and affable. Dipper knows it’s a trick—it’s Bill, it has to be a trick—even if he can’t work out where. 

“What do you want from me?” he asks.

Bill gestures to the chalk circle. “Not poking more holes in the D-brane would be a start. We’re here to try and repair it. Makes it tricky when you’re unpicking the stitches while we’re not looking.”

Dipper blinks. “The what brain?”

Bill sighs. He gestures, and the Journal jerks to life, flicking open in front of Dipper, settling on the page describing the exorcism circle. “Pine Cone, pro tip: if you learn from the incompetent, you’ll never be anything but incompetent.” Dipper scowls, feels like he should say something in defence of great uncle Ford. But before he can, Bill continues, “A Boy’s Own Big Bumper Fun Book of Magic, but what’s the one thing it doesn’t explain?”

Riddles feel more like the Bill Dipper knows, so he flicks hesitantly through the Journal. Pages of wards and incantations, rituals and rites. To him, the notes look thorough, the diagrams complete. Whatever Bill’s getting at, Dipper can’t fathom it. When Bill starts humming the theme from  _Jeopardy_ , Dipper snaps, “Can you not? I’m trying—” then cuts himself off, looking away, angrily.

“Look for eternity,” Bill says, “and you won’t be able to answer the question. That’s, if you’ll excuse the pun, the point. When you start from the wrong base, you end up with the wrong pattern.”

“Are you going to tell me what the ‘right base’ is, or are you just going to be a know-it-all jerk about it?”

“Know-it-all jerk,” Bill says. “Obviously. But never let it be said Bill Cipher is ‘just’ anything.” While Dipper was focused on the book, Bill’s been coming closer. Until he’s just a bright gold pulse and one huge eye. The proximity sends Dipper’s breath shuddering in his throat, little short hiccoughing gulps. “Pine Cone,” Bill says, “you have a whole book about magic right there in front of you, and the one thing it doesn’t tell you is what magic  _is_.”

The realisation is startling, if only for the fact Dipper knows Bill is right. The Journal—all of the Journals—simply treat magic as an empirical fact. Like describing the fall of an apple without mentioning gravity. 

“I… I never thought there would be anything to say,” Dipper admits. “Magic is… magic. That’s why it’s called magic!”

“When Time Baby gave Soos his pizza,” Bill says, “was that magic?”

“I— how do you know about—”

“How do you think, kid? You told me. Also, I make it my business to know what that nappy-wearing freak is up to. But answer the question.”

“I… don’t know,” Dipper admits. “It might’ve been magic, but… but maybe it’s something that just looks like magic.” Like a cell phone in the Stone Age. 

“You’re still assuming there’s a fundamental difference,” Bill says. Then: “Think of it this way. What you meatsacks call ‘magic’ is simply something that doesn’t appear to work within the confines of your understanding of the nature of the universe. Things that defy probability and physics. But what if you could manipulate those fundamental forces?”

“I—”

Then Bill is rearing back, drifting back and forth as he speaks, as if pacing. “Location appropriate segue: what causes gravity?”

This, Dipper does know. “The mass of objects causing curvature in the fabric of spacetime.” He feels proud of that, but Bill just says:

“Cute, but what causes  _that_?”

“I—”

“Or, think of it this way: if gravity is a constant in this universe, what property from outside the universe causes it? And, moreover, if you could access and change that property, would that change gravity and, finally, would that change look like magic?”

“You… you’re talking about string theory. Quantum physics.” Not brains,  _branes_.

“That’s what Pine Tree tells me you meatsacks call it,” Bill says.

Dipper’s heart is suddenly racing for reasons that have nothing to do with fear. “Are you… are you telling me what we call magic is just the practical application of quantum physics?”

“I’m telling you,” Bill says, “if you can reach outside the universe then you can change the properties  _of_  the universe.”

Dipper… feels lightheaded. This is huge, he knows. Huger than a couple of books, huger than gnomes or zombies or dream demons. This is something that could serve to fundamentally change  _everything_ , every field of science, every piece of technology. This would change  _humanity_. 

“Breathe, kid.”

Bill is close again, with arm’s reach, and before Dipper’s really thought about he’s reaching out, hands on either side of Bill’s… head still isn’t the right word. Apex? Whatever. The feeling beneath Dipper’s hands is strange—it  _seethes_ , for one thing—but he’s too breathless to really notice. “Are you kidding me?” he says. “Don’t you know what this  _means_?”

“I know  _exactly_  what it means, Pine Cone.” And Bill’s surface flashes again, this time showing Dipper, older than he is is but not as old as the man on the bed. The Dipper in the image is on the ground, clutching his leg, screaming while something seems to… to grow beneath the fabric of his jeans.

Dipper jerks backwards, stifling a scream.

“It means you lose a leg,” Bill says, the image flickering away. “A leg and a kidney and a chunk of your intestine. It means scars and stitches and staples and prosthetics and physical therapy. It means sometimes it still hurts so much you bite on your knuckles to stop yourself from crying. And,” he adds, “it means I have to watch it all happening.” A pause. “I’m not fond of seeing you in pain, Pine Cone.”

Dipper looks away, mouth thinning, hand reaching to rub at scratches that have long since healed. “Could’ve fooled me.”

Bill just says: “I know that look in your eye. Stanford used to get it, too. He was always reaching, always grasping. Always trying to poke the holes to pull the universe inside out. Big Dipper says I’m not allowed to quote-unquote ‘vent my issues at the kid’ so just pretend I’m not except for the part where I say I know what Pineses are like when it comes to building the diving board at the shallow end of the pool. But, kid, ask yourself: do you wanna be a numerologist or a cryptographer? Because one of those you can play dress-ups with by reading a book or two. The other you gotta study.”

Dipper looks at Bill and he looks down at the Journal, runs a finger across the appliqué on the cover. “I… I’ve always liked cryptography,” he says. He can decode Vigenère in his head, a skill he’d considered completely useless until he found the Journals.

“I know,” says Bill, because he’s Bill. “Pine Tree’s technically Doctor Pine Tree, PhD., applied quantum cryptography.”

Dipper looks to the bed. There’s no time in the Mindscape, or at least it works differently enough that his future self appears to be frozen and unmoving. Dipper gets closer, past Bill, who just watches, also unmoving, but for the slight bobbing of his float and the tracking of his single, long pupil.

“He’s so… he’s so cool,” Dipper says. “I just… Sometimes I don’t believe he’s really me.”

If nothing else, Bill laugh is like Dipper remembers it; angular and sharp and cruel. Dipper gets halfway to panicking—halfway to wondering if this is it, this is when the other shoe drops—when Bill is hovering above the bed, above future-Dipper’s sleeping face, brushing his hair aside in a gesture so uncharacteristically tender—so uncharacteristically  _human_ —that Dipper has a sudden mad realization.

It’s true. It’s all true. Bill Cipher really is future-Dipper’s boyfriend, and everything that means. They’re in love. They share Dipper’s body voluntarily. They really are here on some crazy time travel mission to protect the future.

Bill says:

“You’ve been called a lot of things in your day. ‘Cool’ is not usually one of them.”

Dipper blushes, looking away. He feels like his world’s just tilted sideways, that nothing will ever look like it used to.

“Don’t… don’t tell him I said that,” Dipper says.

“Why not?”

“Because!” Dipper snaps. Then, quieter: “Because I don’t want to make things worse. He already thinks I’m… I’m just some little kid.”

“Pine Cone,” Bill says. “I’ll be the first to admit I don’t always grasp your human ‘aging’”—he makes the air quotes as he says it—“so correct me if I’m wrong. But I was under the impression that you are, in fact, quite literally a ‘little kid’. At least, that’s what big you kept telling me when we were running down the list of things I’m not allowed to say in front of you.” A pause. “It was a long list.” Another pause. “Honestly, I was kind of offended. I’m not  _that_  bad. Mostly, I just pretend not to know stuff about your species because it’s funny. Or I don’t care. But I have watched you for a long time. I’m not an idiot. Sometimes I think you must think I am. So I get mad”—a sudden flash of red and white—“but then I tell myself, ‘No, Bill. It’s not about you. Big Dipper’s just nervous about meeting Little Dipper. He wants to make a good impression. So chill.’”

Dipper feels his fists unclench, just a little. “He… he wants to impress me?”

“Of course,” Bill says. “Think about it. If you met another version of yourself, wouldn’t you want you to think you were cool? Why would this be any different?”

“I… I’ve never thought about it that way.”

“I know,” says Bill, because he’s still Bill. “That’s why I said it. Think about how nervous you get when you meet someone new. That doesn’t go away just because a bunch of time passes and you lose a leg and get an amazing boyfriend. You just get better at hiding it. Not necessarily much better, mind you, but better. Even if said amazing boyfriend has to sit in your head and get all your nauseous stomach cramps and heart palpitations. Bodies are so disgusting. I don’t know how you manage.”

Dipper looks back to his older self. The man’s smiling, and Dipper’s pretty sure he wasn’t before. “I… he gets the… the stomach thing?”

“Oh yeah.” Bill waves a hand, dismissive. 

“Over meeting me?”

“Oh, ugh. Like you would  _totally_  believe. It was awful. And he’s been having all these nightmares. Where you scream at him, and tell him you hate him. And then he wakes up and  _dwells_  on it for like hours. And I say, ‘Stop beating yourself up over something that hasn’t happened and isn’t  _going_  to happen.’ But like he ever listens to me. I mean what would I, an omniscient mind demon, know, right?”

Dipper is silent for a long time, just watching his own sleeping face, aged up two decades. It occurs to Dipper a lot can happen in two decades. A lot can happen, and yet someone can still stay very much the same.

He says: “Hey, Bill?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry I tried to exorcise you.”

“It’s all right, kid. I was getting a little thick around the angles anyway.”

Dipper smiles, he can’t help it. “I think… I think I might go back to bed now,” he says.

“Pine Cone,” Bill says, “you already are.”

* * *

He wakes with a gasp. In his own bed, in his own room, the silvery moonlight casting long shadows across the ceiling.

When Dipper rolls over, he sees the Journal, sitting on his nightstand. He’s still looking at it when he falls asleep.

* * *

Grunkle Stan is frying bacon when Dipper’s adult self emerges, bleary-eyed beneath an explosion of bedhead. 

“How’d you sleep?” asks Stan. He’s pretending to watch what he’s cooking, but he’s actually watching adult Dipper. Adult Dipper, who’s dressed in one of Stan’s old shirts, and makes a face at the coffee pot before pouring himself a cup.

“Like home,” adult Dipper says, then smirks. “Which it is.” He takes a swig of coffee, shudders, then throws himself down at the table. 

Dipper watches him, carefully, though his adult self seems mostly interested in the newspaper. In the actual physicality of the paper, more so than the contents. “Man,” he says. “So retro. I haven’t seen one of these for over a decade.” He looks up at Dipper, then grins. Dipper returns it, then looks quickly away. He can see the edge of his older self’s birthmark beneath his un-brushed hair. The sight of it makes him feel weird, anxious, in the way of all reminders that his older self really is exactly that.

Mabel is also scrutinising adult Dipper. After a moment she asks, “Where’s Bill?”

Dipper looks up, and realises his sister’s right; his adult self’s eyes move in tandem this morning, and his face seems content with a single expression. 

“I smelt bacon,” adult Dipper says. “I smelt bacon, and I said I was going to eat bacon, and if he didn’t like it, he could clear out for a while.”

Mabel tilts her head. “Bill… doesn’t like bacon?”

“Maybe he’s Orthodox,” suggests Stan.

Adult Dipper just laughs. “There’s nothing orthodox about Bill,” he says. “He just hates the idea of ‘consuming the rotting protein of other meatsacks’.” Even without Bill in his head, adult Dipper’s emulation of the voice is scarily good. “So he’s off doing homework for later. Speaking of”—and here he turns to Dipper—“seems like I owe you one.”

“Me?” Dipper tries not squeak as he says it, fails, tries to play that cool, and fails again. 

“What did Dipper do?” From Mabel. A pause. “Little Dipper, I mean.” She has a wicked gleam in her eye as she says it, and Dipper vows to get her back for the nickname later. 

“Your brother,” adult Dipper says, “helped me win a bet with Bill. You know what the great thing about winning bets with a hyper-dimensional semi-omniscient entity is? He never thinks he’s going to lose. So the reward is always worth it.” He slumps back in his chair, all smug self-satisfaction for exactly as long as it takes him to drink another mouthful of coffee.

A new entrant into the kitchen: “You shouldn’t be making deals with that thing. Bill Cipher is no joke.”

“Good morning, great uncle Ford,” both Dippers and Mabel chorus. 

“And,” Ford continues. “I don’t like the idea of allowing it to roam freely around the house. There are children here.”

“Your objection is noted,” says adult Dipper, in a voice that suggests otherwise.

Stan starts handing out bacon, and waffles, and maple syrup, and Dipper thinks about his conversation last night with Bill. That Bill, future Bill, who’d been calm, and strangely human, as far as floating anthropomorphic triangles went. Who’d told Dipper things, about the universe and about himself, and had seemed to genuinely care for Dipper’s adult self. This morning, outside of the Mindscape, Dipper isn’t sure what to make of it all. He knows Bill lies. He knows it could still all be a trick, some front to try and earn Dipper’s trust as part of some long con involving… what, exactly? Something.

So it’s not that Dipper thinks great uncle Ford is wrong about Bill. It’s just that maybe he’s starting to want to. 

Adult Dipper says: “Anyway, we have to go close some holes today. You’re both welcome to come if you want to see something cool.”

It takes Dipper a moment to realise his adult self is addressing him. Well, him and Mabel. Dipper can’t help the grin that splits his face, or the burst of pride that lifts his heart. “Really?”

Dipper’s adult self smirks. “Sure,” he says. “I owe you, after all.”

Dipper looks at Mabel. She seems curious but a little reserved, and so he turns to Stan instead. “Grunkle Stan,” he says, “can I?”

Stan scowls. “I dunno, kid. Sounds dangerous.”

“It is,” says adult Dipper. “But they won’t have to do anything, and I’ll keep them well back. We won’t take on anything big.”

“I’ll supervise,” says Ford.

“Absolutely not,” adult Dipper doesn’t even hesitate.

Ford scowls over his waffles. “Why?”

“Because it  _is_  dangerous,” adult Dipper says, “and the thing that makes it dangerous is if Bill loses concentration. He won’t have a problem if the kids are there, but if he’s too busy grinding his angles over you…” He scowls. “If he loses concentration, he dies. Worse than that. And I won’t lose him because you had a falling out half a century ago.”

“It was not half a century,” Ford says. Which, Dipper supposes, from his point of view, it wasn’t. “And it wasn’t a ‘falling out’. He’s a malevolent demon who—”

“Look, I’m sorry, but can we seriously not talk about my boyfriend like this? I’m really trying here, but I’m going to have to draw some lines.”

“Denying Bill Cipher’s nature helps no one,” Ford says. “You might believe you have it under control now, but—”

“Enough!” A loud thump as adult Dipper slams his hands down on the table, rattling cutlery and spilling his coffee. “That’s enough. I get that you two have your problems. I’m trying to respect that. So… please. Do me the same courtesy, and stop trying to meddle in a relationship that has nothing to do with you.”

Under the table, Dipper feels Mabel’s hand slide into his. He squeezes it, trying for a reassurance he doesn’t feel. 

“I’m just trying to protect you,” Ford snaps, fork stabbing at his waffles. “From… from making my own mistakes.” A pause. “Although, for crying out loud, I never—” He makes a gesture at Dipper’s adult self, eyes darting quickly to Dipper and back. Dipper’s pretty sure what that means. Honestly, he’s trying not to think too much about it, too. 

Adult Dipper just rolls his eyes. “I know,” he says. “Thank goodness for small favours.”

There’s a pause, long and awkward, just the sound of scraping cutlery and chewing. Then Dipper clears his throat, “So, um,” he says. “Can we go?”

* * *

Half an hour later, Bill is back and Dipper is so excited he’s practically bouncing out of his sneakers. “This is gonna be cool,” he keeps saying to Mabel. “So cool.” He’s not sure what’s gonna be cool, other than it’s gonna be this. Heading off to save the world with his older self. 

“I guess…” Mabel trails off, looking back towards the Shack, to where Ford is watching them from the porch, arms folded and scowling. 

“Okay,” says adult Dipper. Or maybe Bipper; the intonation isn’t quite Dipper’s voice and isn’t quite Bill’s. “We ready to go?”

Dipper nods so quickly he starts to feel a little dizzy, and earns a hand ruffling through his hair for his enthusiasm. It should annoy him, he knows it should, but…

“Okay, Mr. Cipher,” says Dipper’s older self. “Take us to Deepdream.” He opens his arms, palms outwards.

“Keep your arms and legs inside the triangle,” Bill answers. “Things are about to get abstract.” When he laughs, it’s Bill’s horrible shrieking laughter, and Dipper has half a second to think maybe—just maybe—this was a terrible idea. Then adult Dipper’s arms explode in cold blue flames, his Bill-eye glowing.

Dipper feels Mabel grab him. Or maybe he grabs her. But before they can do anything, they’re encircled by a ring of Bill’s awful fire. It spreads outwards, burning through the landscape, pulling out colour and life. Dipper sees Ford lunge forward for the porch, as if to reach out to stop them, but it happens in a slow motion that’s fast approaching stopped. 

“REM sleep entered,” Bill, or Dipper, or Bipper says. “Initiating the Methaqualone Protocol. Close your eyes, kids, unless you wanna know how the trick is done. Stripping the magic from your illusions in three…”

The ground beneath their feet, inside the burning circle, turns black. Dipper has half an instant to panic, to start a scream, to prepare for the sensation of gravity, before he realises the ground, despite being a bottomless void, is still solid beneath his feet.

“Two!”

Reflections appear in the black ground, muted and dim, as if they’re standing on a large mirror of polished obsidian. Dipper can see his own frightened face looking back at him, and Mabel’s, as well as his adult self, eyes closed and serene. The pulsing bright triangle of Bill Cipher hangs behind his head like a deranged halo, the eye jerking to stare straight at Dipper.

“I lied! Zero!”

And then Dipper… inverts. He doesn’t have any other word for it. Like a pressure that builds up just behind his belly button, dragging him inwards and down, through his own body, through the mirror. Dipper screams, and Mabel screams, and Bill just laughs and laughs and laughs.

* * *

When he can next think again, he’s cowering on the ground, the weight of his sister piled on top of him.

Bill says: “This station, Deepdream. Depart here for night terrors, surrealist art, and the slow and terrible realisation that your entire existence and the world as you understand it is a pathetic lie! Have a nice stay!”

Dipper opens his eyes. Then instantly wishes he hadn’t. The ground beneath him is grey, at least his mind wants to tell him it is. It’s grey, but it’s also made up of a million constantly shifting psychedelic patterns, like an endlessly repeating JPEG error. The patterns are everywhere, in the ground, in the air. When Dipper moves, he sees them shift around his arms and his legs and his feet. Around Mabel’s arms and legs and feet. 

Mabel, who’s already standing, eyes huge and wide, fists balled and pressed against her cheeks. “That,” she says. “Was. Awesome!” Then she throws her arms up, shrieking with joy, running in exuberant circles even as she begs whomever’s listening to let them do it again.

Meanwhile, Dipper feels like he’s going to be sick. He tries to stand but his legs won’t work, feel like he’s trying to move through Jello. On his third attempt, a large hand appears in his vision.

“It’s a bit much the first time,” says Dipper’s adult self. “And Captain Melodrama here doesn’t help. I probably should’ve warned you about that. Sorry.” He smiles, kind and slightly embarrassed. He still has his Bill-halo, just a simple glowing triangle, eye flicking between watching Mabel and watching Dipper.

Dipper accepts the hand, pulling himself upright. “Where… where are we?” He feels queasy and awful, is getting a headache from the shifting-yet-featureless landscape. Just a strange grey expanse, no horizon and no sky. Dipper can make out shapes in the distance, but their outlines are distorted and nonsensical. 

“The other side of the Mindscape, kid,” says Bill, light flickering from behind adult Dipper’s head. 

“Think of the Mindscape like a bubble,” adult Dipper says. “Formed around the universe. In the Mindscape, you’re on the inside surface of that bubble. Here, we’re on the outside.”

“The backstage of reality,” Bill adds. “The man behind the curtain.”

“If the universe is on the inside,” Dipper says slowly, “What’s on the outside?”

“That.” It’s Mabel talking. Talking, and pointing upwards.

No horizon and no sky, but there are clouds, a rolling grey storm above their heads. Through the gaps, Dipper can see… 

“What  _is_  that?”

“That’s me, Pine Cone,” says Bill. “The real Bill Cipher, all stood up.”

It looks like a deranged, constantly shifting Magic Eye poster, a restless Mandelbrot Set, a triangle in ten dimensions. It looks like all of that, and none of it, and mostly it looks like something Dipper’s eyes aren’t evolved to see. Something his brain is struggling to make sense of, a drowning man grabbing madly at metaphorical driftwood. 

Dipper sucks in a sharp breath. “Is this… Is this Bill’s Mindscape?”

“No,” says Bill, at the exact same time as Dipper’s adult self says, “Yes.” The two of them end up in a sort of good-natured argument about it, and while they’re busy, Dipper looks to his sister.

She’s sculpting the psychedelic nothingness around them into what is quite possibly the most terrifying snowman Dipper’s ever seen. “I can kinda see why Big You didn’t want great uncle Ford here,” she says as she works. Her voice is lighthearted but Dipper’s known her long enough to hear the worry underneath. “If this is Bill’s place and all.”

“Should you be doing that?” he asks her, gesturing to the snowman. 

“It’s fine,” Bill calls. “Knock yourselves out, kids. Nothing here will hurt you.” A pause. “Well. One thing. You’ll know it when you see it.”

Not  _can hurt you_ , Dipper notes.  _Nothing will_ , like it could do, if Bill decided on it. 

Bill… does not seem like he’s about to decide on it. He seems like he’s talking to adult Dipper, who’s wandered off a little ways, and is pointing into the void. 

There doesn’t seem to be any hurry, so Dipper helps Mabel with her snowman. Then she helps him with his, then they build a kind of fort. Summoning objects here isn’t as easy as it is in the regular Mindscape. Or, rather, summoning familiar objects isn’t. The landscape is like Play-Doh, infinitely mouldable and unformed. Mabel is better at shaping it than Dipper is, creating trees and animals to populate their new city. 

There seems to be neither haste nor time, as such, and it’s not until Dipper is standing atop their castle that it occurs to him to wonder how long they’ve been here. As he pauses, he hears, “Hey, kid!” from down below. He gets halfway through turning when something hits him in the side of the head. It’s about the size and shape of a snowball and as insubstantial as fairy floss. He feels its impact, but the mass disintegrates immediately, and when he looks down he sees his adult self, arms raised in triumph. “Woo! Gotcha!”

Dipper makes a split-second decision, crumpling to the ground and yelling, “Avenge me, sister! Auurrghh!”

“Dipper, no-oo-oo-oo-oo!” Mabel cries, shaking her fists at the fractals above. “Curse you, Future Brother!”

“Haha! Now it is I who is the one who will be the only Dipper!” says adult Dipper. 

Then they’re all laughing, chasing each other around the fort, creating strange and abstract weapons to fight with. When Dipper finds himself shot between the eyes by a one-eyed blond boy he’s never seen before, he realizes even Bill has decided to join them. 

“He’s really cute,” Mabel hisses to him as they hide behind a wall, preparing an ambush. “I call dibs!”

“Wait, what? No!” The words come out of Dipper’s mouth before he can stop them, too fast and too earnest. He feels his skin heating up, half stammers something out while Mabel puts her hands over her mouth and makes a noise that’s half-squeal, half-giggle. Then she throws a handful of dream in his face.

“Sibling betrayal!” she announces, leaping up and scampering off before Dipper can react.

Not before someone can react, however, and a black and yellow streak darts out from behind one of Dipper’s lollipop-shaped attempts at a tree. “Love triangle! Revenge!” Bill announces, then he’s rolling on top of Mabel on the ground, poking her in the ribs. “See how it is when you’re being tickled!”

Then there’s, “Older future brother, heel-face-turn!” and adult Dipper is there, grabbing Bill and lifting him into the air.

“Never trust anyone over thirty!” Bill announces, and Dipper and Mabel take that as their turn to strike. The three of them end up on top of adult Dipper on the ground, laughing and wrestling and rolling across the weird and abstract landscape. Dipper ends up in a headlock from his adult self, getting something that’s half noogie, half affectionate tousling of his hair. He’s laughing so much he doesn’t even remember to feel self-conscious until much, much later.

* * *

Much, much later, when they’re standing in front of the thing they came here to find, in fact.

Bill said they’d know the thing that could hurt them when they saw it. Now, they’re seeing it. It looks like a hole in reality. It has no color or light, which Dipper’s eyes interpret as “black”, even when he knows it isn’t. It’s just… a hole. A hole oozing fractals, the pattern subtly frightening in some way Dipper has never really found a mathematical pattern frightening before. Not the Bill-fractal in the sky, not the fractal of adult Dipper’s scar. But something in between, perhaps. Something like the pattern made from the rubble at the end of time.

“What is it?” Mabel asks.

“It’s called the Bulk,” adult Dipper says. “It’s—”

“The rest of me,” Bill, who’s back as his halo-self, interjects.

“It’s where you come from,” says adult Dipper. “I’m not sure you could say it’s you.”

“Is your severed leg still you?” asks Bill.

“You realise that analogy makes you the leg?”

“Leg and a kidney, thank you.”

“The Bulk is… it’s a quantum physics thing,” says Dipper, because he read a book on it in the library once. Well, part of a book. It was a long book. “It’s the… the stuff outside the universe.”

“Outside the univers _es_ ,” adult Dipper clarifies. “Think of the Bulk as an infinite bowl of quantum noodle soup. A universe is a wonton, a Braneworld, in that soup.”

“Also,” Bill adds, “the soup is hostile and wants to eat you.”

“Braneworlds are imperfections in the Bulk,” says adult Dipper. “We can argue all day over whether the Bulk is alive or sentient in and of itself—”

“We can argue if you’re alive or sentient,” snaps Bill.

“—or whether sentience is an emergent property or adpatation to long-term exposure to the inside of a Braneworld,” adult Dipper finishes, very pointedly. “But the bottom line is this is a hole in the wall around our universe. Like a leak that lets in the ocean. Too much ocean gets in, and… boom, goodbye universe.”

“Nice metaphor.” Bill, still annoyed. “Very mixed.” 

“This is what you were talking about last night,” Dipper tells Bill. “This is where magic comes from.”

“The physical constants of the universe are the result of resonances in the Bulk being filtered through the D-brane,” adult Dipper says. “By maniuplating the Bulk—in effect, by tickling it—you can create changes in the universe. But the cost of doing that is poking a hole in the very thing that allows our universe to exist in the first place. The bigger the effect, the bigger the hole.”

“And the bigger the entry-point for the Bulk,” Bill adds, voice pitched low and sharp.

“This is why you don’t like great uncle Ford.” Mabel, ever perceptive. “He pokes holes.”

“Stanford Pines,” Bill says, “cuts fabric into shreds and calls it a suit—”

“Bill,” warns adult Dipper.

“—He’s lazy—”

“Bill…”

“—Incompetent—”

“Bill…”

“—arrogant, and if I have to—”

“Bill!”

Bill, who’s been getting steadily redder, flashes back to a sullen sort of yellow. His eye is scowling, the pupil darting around and not settling on anything. Dipper’s adult self just sighs. “Anyway,” he says. “Point being, reality has some holes it in. Good news? We know how to close them. And how to clean up.”

“Can you teach me?” Dipper tries to make it sound cool and composed, failing miserably. “I want to learn. I can help. I want to help.”

This earns him a grin and more affectionate hair ruffling he wishes he found more annoying than he does. “I know,” says his adult self. “But this takes the two of us. Well, it’s mostly Bill. I just hold the rope when he jumps.”

Dipper isn’t sure what this means, and doesn’t get a chance to ask. Not when his adult self is walking forward, towards the oozing Bulk. He’s walking calmly, but Dipper can sense a change in the air, an anxious roil in the sky above. Not to mention the ground seems to shift, space distorting until Dipper and Mabel are further back from whatever it is that’s about to go down. 

“Ready?” adult Dipper asks.

“Time for lunch,” says Bill. They extend their arms, blue fire exploding to life. The Bulk notices, straining forward, thrashing as if trying to reach them.

“Pick an anchor, any anchor.” Dipper’s not sure who’s talking any more, the two voices blending into one, golden light pulsing brighter and brighter. “Third anniversary? The night with the…” A laugh, warm and fond. “That was a good night.” Then a pause, all three eyes closed, as if both are remembering something from a long time ago. Then: “Okay. Incoming in three, two—”

“Zero!” This very definitely from Bill, who suddenly has arms and legs again, detaching from his place behind the head of Dipper’s adult self. His eye opens, and when it does…

When it opens again, it’s a mouth. A huge strange void ringed by eight little inwards-pointing teeth. Then Bill is distorting, swelling. Getting bigger and lunging forward, until his gaping maw descends right over the still-placid form of adult Dipper.

“Did he just—!” Mabel says, at the same time as Dipper blurts, “He ate him!” Which is true, because then it’s just Bill, floating with arms extended, wreathed in blue flame. His eye is an eye again but it’s different now, with two slitted pupils cutting sharp dark lines against the glow. He’s also, Dipper notes, missing most of one leg, the brickwork on that third of his body cracked and blown apart as floating rubble. 

Dipper looks up. He’s not sure, but he thinks the pattern he can see peeking through the clouds is… different. Tinged with hints of the scar on adult Dipper’s side. Almost as if…

“Is big you…  _possessing_  Bill?”

Dipper doesn’t think it’s something that simple. Or, rather, maybe it’s something even simpler. Because Bill, or Bipper, or… Dill… or whomever he or they want to be… that entity is raising its arms, blue flames jumping into shapes Dipper knows are qubits, even as he doesn’t know how or why he knows that.

“Initialising QKD, E91 protocol,” says Bill-Dipper. “Let’s reencrypt and shut this freakshow down.” Then the blue light is slicing through the writhing Bulk, a rain of fire that cauterizes the torn wound of reality. The Bulk reacts in kind, thrashing and straining, its movements growing both weaker and more desperate as whatever process Bill-Dipper has initated completes.

When it’s done, the hole is gone, but the Bulk isn’t; voided fractals that flop like dying fish. Bill-Dipper looks at them, says, “Third anniversary. Right.” And then… explodes isn’t the right word.  _Fractals_  is more like it, tears open and multiplies, even as the sky comes slamming down like a fist, catching Bill-Dipper in its wake.

It hits the remainder of the Bulk, and for a moment there’s a battle; the Bulk’s pattern versus Bill-Dipper’s, swirling and swarming and fighting for dominance.

It’s never that much of a fight. The fragments of Bulk are tiny, and Bill-Dipper’s pattern secure.  _The anchor_ , Dipper thinks. A human memory to hold against domination by the Bulk’s alien consumption?

Beside him, Dipper hears his sister breathe: “They’re beautiful.”

They are, a sprawl of black and gold and iridescent blue, both contained and infinte. This, Dipper thinks, is what they’re dealing with. The pure alien experience that lies just outside the universe, the origins of Bill Cipher and the future of Dipper Pines. He feels…

Honestly, he’s not sure what he feels. His heart aches and for the first time he thinks maybe he’s too young for this, too young for the emotion suddenly exploding in his chest. Wonder and despair and awe and terror, all rolled into one. An atavistic existential realisation, both of his own insignificance in the face of the multiverse, but also of his importance. Of everyone’s importance. Because in such an unfathomably huge reality, what else is there to measure than tiny individual lives?

And then, as soon as it comes, it’s over; the Bulk consumed, the Bill-Dipper fractal folding back in on itself, rearing back up behind the clouds, until all that’s left is a single, two-pupiled triangle.

It says, “And there you have it.” Then snaps its fingers and—

* * *

“Dipper! Mabel!”

—great uncle Ford is leaping from the porch, arm extended and eyes wide in horror. He gets two steps before faltering. Because the sun is warm and the wind is cool, the grass soft and dirt hard beneath their feet.

Dipper blinks. No time has passed and yet he feels like he’s just woken from a week’s worth of sleep, his mind foggy and limbs heavy. When he looks, Mabel is wearing the same dazed expression, rubbing at her eyes with the back of one arm.

Behind them, adult Dipper burps.

“Must be something I ate,” he says.

* * *

Dipper’s adult self doesn’t take them back to Deepdream, but does spend most of the rest of the day there himself. He reappears for lunch, sans Bill, and eats like he hasn’t done so in a week, before heading out again. He ruffles Dipper’s hair as he goes, his limp heavy and the circles around his eyes deeper and darker than they were this morning.

Dipper spends most of the day with Wendy in the gift shop. She talks about “Tyrone” an awful lot and the thought occurs to Dipper that maybe this is what he sounds like when he talks about her. The thought isn’t an unkind one. It’s a human one. It’s the sort of thought, Dipper knows, that could be used to stand against the ravages of a hostile alien multiverse. What does something like the Bulk know about teenage crushes?  _I just hold the rope_ , his adult self had said. Dipper wonders if this is what he meant, if this is what makes future-Bill so strangely human. An emergent property of exposure to the inside of a Braneworld, their Braneworld, and a Bill who decided to keep it for his own, even if it meant turning more human in the process. 

Mostly, Dipper thinks he has a lifetime of years to think these thoughts, and only a few more to be a kid. So he leaves Wendy to her daydreams, and goes to find his sister, to play hide-and-seek around the Sascrotch.

* * *

There’s another argument when adult Dipper reappears late that night, Ford accusing Bill of sabotage against his work. Dipper’s adult self is eating cold leftover dinner, Dipper secretly wonders if Ford chose the time as one Bill wouldn’t be around. 

“It’s not the intent of what we’re doing,” Dipper’s adult self says. “But it is a side-effect, yes. When we stabilize the D-brane it reduces the density of exploitable quantum inconsistencies.” He both sounds and looks exhausted, far beyond arguments and hedging explanations. But Dipper thinks he gets it; when they close the holes, the magic stops. 

“You’re doing that monster’s dirty work,” Ford says. “Making us weak against its schemes.”

Dipper’s adult self just pokes half-heartedly at cold meatballs. “You know,” he says, “I was really looking forward to coming back to see you again. I used to idolize you so much, and it’s been so long…” He trails off. “I knew it would be difficult, because of Bill, but I really thought… I don’t know. I though once I explained what we were doing, that you’d understand. That maybe… Maybe you’d be proud of me. I know I’m not as smart as you, haven’t achieved as much as you. I’m a cryptographer, actually. Did I tell you that? I write books and do lecture tours about quantum key distribution, that sort of thing. Pretty boring. The only exciting things I’ve done are figure out how to re-encrypt holes in reality and somehow managed to end up as Bill Cipher’s love interest. I mean, it’s not like I’m some awesome universe-hopping hero-inventor. But it’s my life. I thought… I thought you’d at least be happy for me.” He sighs. “But I guess… I guess it’s not going to matter soon, anyway.”

The scrape of his chair as he stands is very loud, the silence from Ford very long. Dipper presses himself deeper into the shadows as his adult self limps from the kitchen, wrenching open the door and vanishing out onto the porch. Because, yeah. That’s also a thing; Dipper’s supposed to be asleep. He’s not, because he’s lurking in the shadows behind the couch in the den, eavesdropping on conversations he’s not supposed to hear.

The door slams, and there are more long, awful moments of silence. Then Grunkle Stan says, “Well. I hope you’re real fucking proud of yourself, Stanford. Real fucking proud.” He goes to the fridge, yanks that door open hard enough to send the whole thing rattling.

Ford is still sitting at the kitchen table. He has his glasses pushed up on top of his head, finger and thumb digging into his eye sockets.

He says:

“Fuck.” And Dipper thinks it’s the first time he’s ever heard his great uncle swear. “So help me but I think I need to talk to Bill,” Ford adds.

“No fucking shit,” Grunkle Stan says. Then he slams the fridge door, following Dipper’s adult self out onto the porch. A moment later, Ford retreats across the Shack and down into the basement.

As quietly as he can, Dipper creeps closer to the front door. Outside, muffled, but not too muffled, by the Mystery Shack’s thin walls, he hears:

“Offer you a beer, kid?”

“Yeah. Sure. Why the hell not?” comes adult Dipper’s reply. Then: “I don’t, usually, when Bill needs a ride. He doesn’t like being drunk. Also, he gets really,  _really_  weird when he is. Like, he literally forgets how to act human. It’s kinda funny, but… but don’t tell him I told you that.”

Grunkle Stan gives a muted laugh, and there’s another pause before he says, “So. A crypto-whatter, huh?” Dipper gets the impression he has absolutely no idea what that means.

His adult self must get the same idea, because he laughs. “Cryptographer,” he says. “It means, ironically, that I study ciphers.”

“Ouch.”

“I know, right? Patterns repeat.”

Another pause. Then: “So, uh. You and the triangle…?”

“He had a human body back home.” Dipper can practically hear the smirk in his adult self’s voice. “And he can manifest in the Mindscape as anything he wants, he just picks the triangle because—” Something that sounds like a gesture Dipper can’t see. “But yeah, me and the triangle.”

“How’d you meet?”

“Well, long story, but through Gideon. He was basically keeping Bill prisoner, trapped in a human body, doing his bidding, the works. Had been for about half a decade before he finally killed you—”

“Wait, what?”

“You got better! That was Bill, actually, but, point is; you’d named me as your executor, so I had to come here. Uh, Gideon had used Bill to erase all my memories of this summer and, okay look this story gets kind of convoluted. I guess it doesn’t matter much any more, but tl;dr you punched Gideon straight into Ironic Hell and then me and Bill tag teamed up to kick some extradimensional fractal ass. Once you’ve been inside someone’s head and they’ve been inside yours and you’ve both saved the universe… moving in together isn’t really a big step, you know?”

“I’ll take you word for it.”

“We live here, and we’re happy. You’re retired, went on a bunch of cruises for a while after Mum and Dad suggested it. Bill runs the Shack. He’s kind of a natural.”

“I’d nod my head in agreement but you might tell and I don’t want to encourage him.”

“Hah. What else? Mabel runs a fashion label out of the UK, pretty successful, and she’s also a crack hand at designing clones. She makes most of Bill’s bodies, which is one of those things that, as her brother, I appreciate but try not to think too hard about sometimes, you know?”

“Heh. I’ll bet.”

“Soos and Melody and married and live in Portland. They have like a million kids, and are sickeningly happy. Wendy works for this international forestry NGO doing conservation work. Pacifica was married to Gideon for like two months which ended with your aforementioned punching. I think now she’s sworn off men and spends her time between running the Northwests’ business here and visiting Mabel in London. Gideon made like this army of clones for himself; we’re still not sure how many there are. They resurface occasionally. One just lives this entirely normal life over in New Zealand with a wife and three kids. They came to visit a couple of years ago and it was way weird. As far as we can tell he’s just a really nice guy who wants to get as far away from all the other Gideons as possible.” 

“It’s a con.”

“Yeah, we all thought so too, future you included. But Bill’s done his Bill thing and, nope. Seems like not. Now they’re friends on Facebook. Life is strange, I guess.”

“I’ll drink to that.” A faint clink, like two beer bottles being tapped together. Then Grunkle Stan says, “So what’s the part you aren’t telling me?”

“I… what do you mean?”

“C’mon, kid. Don’t ever try and con a con artist.”

A long, awful pause. Then Dipper hears his adult self sigh. “I… You  _can’t_  tell Dipper this. Or Mabel, but especially Dipper. At least, not until he’s older. If he ever asks about it.”

“Okay.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise. Pinky-swear, even.”

More terrible silence. Dipper can feel his stomach start to turn, can feel his palms start to sweat. He considers going back upstairs, to not listen to whatever his future self doesn’t want him to hear. Is still considering it, in fact, when adult Dipper says:

“I keep talking about all this like we’re just here to do some magic, patch up some holes, then head home. The truth is…” A pause, and Dipper barely dares to breathe. “The truth is—”

The truth is a hand, descending heavy on his shoulder. Dipper nearly screams, is momentarily proud of himself that he doesn’t, then does so on the inside when great uncle Ford says, “How long have you been there?”

“Um…” says Dipper. It occurs to him time doesn’t run right in the Mindscape. Ford could’ve held an awfully long conversation in the brief time he’s been gone. 

Ford’s eyes flick to the door, then back to Dipper. “Go on,” he says. “Off to bed.” He’s holding something in his other hand, Dipper realizes. A glass orb full of stars, a hole in reality, an inch across and infinitely big.

Dipper wants to ask about it, wants to know why Ford’s brought it upstairs, whether he intends to give the rift to Dipper’s adult self and, if so, why.

He wants to ask, but what he says is: “Okay. Good night, great uncle Ford.”

“Good night.” Ford watches as Dipper heads up the stairs, then opens the door and steps out onto the porch. Dipper pauses, just a little, and hears:

“I spoke with Bill. He is still a massive jackass.”

Something that might be a cautious laugh. “No argument here.”

“Not bad looking, though. He polishes up alright.”

“Well, I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this, but Bill is a tiny bit vain.”

A stifled gasp. “In all my years, I swear I have never observed such a thing. Bill Cipher? Vain? Outrageous!”

And then there’s laughing, and Dipper heads upstairs.

The voices continue from the porch for a long time, but Dipper’s too asleep to listen to what they say.

* * *

There’s a boy in the forest, shining gold against muted silver. He’s holding a large book, clutched against his chest in front of an over-sized yellow sweater that looks fresh off Mabel’s needles. The sweater has a single eye knitted on the front, but that’s really not what gives it away.

“Bill?”

“Hey, Pine Cone,” says Bill. “I’m here to tell you that we’re leaving. Big Dipper wants me to convey his goodbye. So: Goodbye.”

“Oh,” says Dipper. “Um. Goodbye?” He shifts from foot to foot.

“And,” Bill says, as if just remembering, “to give you this.” He holds out the book. It has a cover as black as the pre-dawn sky, adorned with glittering stars in the shape of the Big Dipper.

“What… is it?”

“An unsubtle metaphor,” Bill says.

Dipper takes the book, opens it. On the title page, in rough handwriting he recognizes as his own, are the words BOY’S OWN BIG BUMPER FUN BOOK OF MAGIC. He flips through the pages, sees writing and diagrams and tables. Some of it looks like it’s from his own adult self’s hand, some from Bill’s. The text and the diagrams get more and more incomprehensible as the book progresses.

“I get it,” he says after a while. “No shortcuts, no skipping to the end to… to start casting fireballs on my first go.”

“Actually,” Bill says, “fireballs are easy. You’ll get to them in a month or two. But yes, that’s the idea. Gotta learn addition and subtraction before you skip ahead to quantum physics.”

“Why… why give me this?” Dipper asks. “Haven’t you been trying to take magic out of the world?”

“We’ve been trying to stop an incomprehensible nightmare from outside of space and time devouring the future,” Bill says. “By repairing the walls between this side of reality and the other. But every wall has doors. You just need to learn to keep them closed when you don’t need them opened.”

There’s a flowchart, on page four, titled ORDER OF MAGICAL OPERATIONS. It goes:

PREPARE → WARD → OPEN → MANIPULATE → WITHDRAW → CLOSE → CLEANSE → REVIEW

There’s a lot of text about each step, a lot of underlined words and circled exclamation points marking important cautions.  _Do not open anything you cannot close,_  reads one passage.  _Do not open anything you’re not sure if you’ll be able to close. Methodologies for assessing breach closure success rates are described in Chapter 3: Fundamental Preparations. Risk tables for Bulk incursion associated with quantum difference impact coefficients are described in Appendix A: Figures, at Figure 3-24._  Dipper’s pretty sure he’s read history textbooks less dry than this. He’s also pretty sure a history textbook never taught him to set things on fire with his mind.

He says: “What do you want in return?” Because no one ever got taught the secrets of the universe for free. Particularly not by one Mr. Bill Cipher. 

But what Bill says is: “Me? Nothing. It’s not actually from me. It’s from you. And in return, he wants you to agree to one single condition.”

Dipper looks up. “Which is?”

“Don’t always be in such a hurry to grow up. You’ll have a whole lifetime for this stuff. For being a kid? Not so much.”

Dipper turns at the voice. And there, standing behind him, is his adult self, self-deprecating smile and missing leg and all. Dipper looks down at the book, then up again.

“Do… do you really have to go?” he asks.

“Yeah,” says adult Dipper. “We do.”

“Oh.” Another awkward pause. “Um. Will I see you again?”

His adult self laughs. “Well, technically speaking you’ll see me every day in about twenty years’ time. But in the sense you’re asking? No. No, we’re…” He glances up, back over Dipper’s shoulder to where Bill is. “We can’t stay. It’s not fair on you if we do. You deserve to grow into your own life, not live in the shadow of ours.”

“I…” Dipper looks down, fingers running across the cover of the now-closed book. The black feels like butter-soft suede, the stars like little frozen diamonds. “I wouldn’t mind?” he suggests. There’s so much he doesn’t know, so much he wants to ask. A book is a book but how is it anything compared to a person? Compared to his own self?

His own adult self, who’s walking forward, then kneeling down. “Dipper,” he says, “you’ll do great. Always remember, no matter what happens, I love you, and I’m proud of you.”

Dipper nods, even if he can’t meet his adult self’s eyes. He feels… he feels like someone’s cut a hole from his heart. Something he hadn’t even realized he had until it was gone.

“Come here.”

And then big, warm arms are wrapping around him, the feel of wool and the smell of leather and pine trees. A hand cups the back of his head, pressing his forehead against that of his adult self.

“I’ll always be in here. But don’t be in a rush to find me, okay?”

Dipper nods, or tries to, as much as he can. His eyes are screwed shut and his chest aches, and he can’t possibly be crying because this is the Mindscape, and that’s not how the Mindscape works.

Then his adult self is pulling back, holding him at arm’s length, smile soft and bittersweet. “And, seriously kid. Get out a bit more, huh? This is supposed to be summer holidays. Don’t spend it all in a dark basement getting paranoid and jumping at shadows.”

Behind him, he hears Bill clear his throat. “Speaking of which…” His voice is a little different, a little deeper, and when he walks into view, he’s both human-seeming and an adult. Thin and tall and dressed in an ostentatious outfit in black and yellow, long coat lined with an infinite swirling universe.

“I, uh, I don’t know what I’m going to be like when we’re gone,” Bill admits, eye not quite looking at Dipper as if this confession of minor ignorance pains him. “I’m almost entirely certain there will be a me left behind, and I suggest the exercise of caution will be a prudent approach on your part. If I end up being… difficult, I’d suggest Appendix B: Bill might be of use.” A pause. “And if that doesn’t work, Appendix C: Cipher.”

Dipper’s adult self looks sharply up at Bill. “I told you not to put that in! I thought you agreed not to.”

“I lied,” snaps Bill. “It’s there if the kid needs it.”

“Well he shouldn’t! It’s awful magic, no one should use it.” He turns to Dipper. “Seriously. Don’t listen to Bill—”

“It’s my Name, Pine Tree. I can do what I like with it.”

“—He’s a self-destructive idiot. Just rip that whole chapter out and burn it. Seriously. You’ll regret it if you use it. Trust me, I know.”

Dipper looks between his adult self and Bill, then back again. Then he nods and says, “Okay.” He’s not sure who he’s agreeing with.

“Okay,” he adult self echoes, pulling him in for another hug. “You’re a good kid.” He holds on for a moment longer, then pulls back, and stands. He walks two paces backward, extending a hand towards Bill as he does. Bill, who accepts the gesture, fingers lacing with fingers.

“Goobye, Dipper Pines,” says Dipper’s adult self. “See you in twenty years.” He waves.

Dipper waves back, his other hand clutching the book against his chest. “Bye,” he says.

Then Bill and his adult self turn, and walk off into the forest. Dipper watches until he can no longer see them through the trees.

Tomorrow, when he wakes, they’ll both be gone.

**Author's Note:**

> ... and now we're over, [Little Dipper's song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWLvB4HxTA4).
> 
> FWIW, I imagine the far side of the Mindscape looks a bit like a [Yves Tanguy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yves_Tanguy) painting run through Google's [Deepdream](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCE-QeDfXtA), hence the name of the place.
> 
> **Bonus content: Bad art!**
> 
>   
> 
> 
> Some Bills and Dippers from 10Y2W. Bipper's [tshirt is real](https://www.zerodayclothing.com/products/inmathwetrust/inmathwetrust.php), because cryptographers love the Eye of Providence IRL, too.
> 
> Also: apparently I have [a Tumblr](http://orphanfalls.tumblr.com/) now? Eek.


End file.
